What I want to be when I grow up: Dance Class Accompanist

[Mighty Motif Max]

@MightyMotifMax, thanks for the examples! Nicely played and written but not intimidating in their complexity, as you said. Minor quibble, the very 1st one lost the classical vibe a little, for me, with it's "Floydisms" (whole step hammer-ons)...an odd complaint coming from someone with my screen name, I know. I particularly liked the more uptempo, ragtime-y ones. My friend said that Scott Joplin pieces came in handy, that's good because I have played and memorized several.

 

Yeah, it's a little non-classical, but overall the songs kind of are in the same genre that we use a lot in classes. For steps that are in 2/4 or 4/4, that's where the pseudo-ragtime stuff comes in. Medium tempo ragtime works well, though you might want to avoid some of the most common tunes (The Entertainer, the Alley Cat) so as to not be distracting (people are strange, what can I say?).

No worries about my behavior as I am pretty good at not being a creep. In my younger days I might have had to fight the involuntary "swivel head" reflex, but now females less than 30 years old look like babies.

 

Glad to hear it.

[artdob]

Dance class accompanist - one of the most enjoyable fulfilling gigs I"ve ever had. Back in my college days. Getting paid to improvise. Priceless.

[Al Quinn]

I had a steady gig accompanying dance classes and enjoyed it. The instructors seemed to prefer that I could improvise in the classical style and quickly change tempo and/or meter to match their needs. They showed no interest in specific repertoire. It was a good experience and it was good for my playing. I brought some classical music to read but usually ended up improvising in a classical or romantic era style.

[pinkfloydcramer]

Do you improvise chords then, or just play back the melody they sang?

 

I try to do both, taking my best intuitive guess on the chords and hoping for the best. Just a parlor trick and people are appreciative if you make the effort and at least get close. I live for requests and any kind of interaction but I'm terrible about prompting it, which is frustrating. Some crowds are good sports and others sit back with their arms crossed, as if to say "you're not going to play ME" lol.

 

Earlier in the shift and with a fuller room, when things have a more formal feel, I am more likely to say "sorry, don't know that one, could I play something else?". As most do.

[allan_evett]

The single biggest thing will be that you absolutely must have rock-solid timing. Take it from a former ballet dancer.

 

Repertoire will depend on the kind of dance you at working with. A ballet class will have different requirements than a modern dance or lyrical class will, for instance. From my years in ballet, it tends to be more about music that fits the given exercise than specific songs, until you get to performance pieces, of course, which are set in stone obviously.

 

 

I've done ballet class accompanying for about six years: two for a private dance school in Chicago (1991-93), and four for the dance department at Colorado State Univ. in Fort Collins (2010-13). For classroom/studio work, my experience fits exactly to that above. Even the most strict Vagonova instructors would take an accompanist who improvised and had excellent time, vs a repertoire monster who coudn't stay true to a count. My boss and occasional teacher had both going for him, as well as being a jam band keyboardist who was also getting a doctorate in piano performance

[pinkfloydcramer]

For steps that are in 2/4 or 4/4, that's where the pseudo-ragtime stuff comes in. Medium tempo ragtime works well, though you might want to avoid some of the most common tunes (The Entertainer, the Alley Cat) so as to not be distracting (people are strange, what can I say?)

 

Well dang! :(The Entertainer is pretty much my signature piece (not that I play it like Henry Butler, mind you). One of my favorite rags is the less well known The Easy Winners. I bet that would be a good one. Hopefully Solace, Pineapple Rag, Magnetic Rag and others too.

 

I suspect that if Music Box Dancer was played, the ballerinas would rush the piano and open the lid, force the pianist's head inside and slam it until he was decapitated.

[danstein]

 

I grew up with something similar to that ability, actually. It's essentially a very, very strong ear that can be subconsciously translated onto keyboard instruments and other instruments. I however have taken plenty of lessons and things to add to that ability, which obviously helps greatly in areas that the above skill does not really cover, and has helped me understand a lot more of what I'm actually doing, and expanded on what I can do by a huge margin. But yeah, that's how I was when I started gigging as a kid. I didn't know chords - I had taken some basic lessons, but they did not help with chords at all. If I heard the song two or three times, I could play it (I still can). At the time it was not necessarily in the same key as the original, but I'm better at that now. Almost all of those songs have stayed with me too - I had a repertoire of over 200 songs I could play at a given second, with only 5-10 of them learned from music. Most I had never seen music or chords for, and I had just picked them up from recordings. I know all too well the feeling of not being able to explain the technical details of what I just played for someone.

 

This brings to mind something I have thought about over the years. I grew up with a similar good ear - I started piano lessons when I was about 5, and when I switched teachers after a couple of years, the new teacher was sort of shocked to find that I couldn't really read music. My first teacher would always play whatever piece she had assigned to me, and I would go home and figure it out by ear, with a little help from the sheet music. The new teacher refused to play anything for me, and forced me to learn to read!

 

However, after years of playing both classical and improvised music, I realized that I seem to have two totally different pathways for learning music - and there is surprisingly little overlap between them. As it turns out, if I learn something from the sheet music - even if it's just a lead sheet from a fake book - it is really, really hard for me to memorize it and play it without the music. Whereas, if I learn it by ear, then it is learned, and I never need to look at a sheet or even a chord chart again. It's almost as though the different approaches encode the information to different parts of my brain. I realized it when I was having to learn a lot of music for multiple bands - I didn't want to have to carry cheat sheets or charts to every gig, and the only way I could do it was to force myself to learn strictly be ear/memory, no written notes at all.